


in your dreams

by ABitObsessed, Blixer



Series: ShuAkeWeek2020 [7]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akira needs a hug, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Fluff, Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, ShuAkeWeek2020, Soul Bond, Soulmates, Telepathic Bond, Trauma, cops being cops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:35:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27592133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABitObsessed/pseuds/ABitObsessed, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blixer/pseuds/Blixer
Summary: In a world where soulmate connections are established through touch, where once you consent to it (or if it happens by accident) a telepathic connection is established, and you can talk to the other person much like a phone call, only with privacy and intimacy.In this world, Akira's hands are stained.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Series: ShuAkeWeek2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1988329
Comments: 8
Kudos: 136





	in your dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: Soulmates, Nightmares, Free Day!
> 
> We have, once again, tackled them all.

Akira jerked awake, which was nothing new. He had a bad habit of falling asleep in weird places, usually only when he felt comfortable with his surroundings and the people he was with.

Which he did not, at the moment. The view of the unfamiliar city sprawling out before him as he rode an unfamiliar train, wearing unfamiliar clothes, forced into close proximity with strangers sporting unfamiliar expressions of indifference was anything but _safe_.

Which probably said something about how exhausted he was. The past few days hadn’t exactly been conducive to a good night’s sleep.

He had just touched the guy. He had just--he just grabbed and pulled on his shoulder, trying to get him away from that woman, and then he was tumbling down all on his own. 

He had just been doing the right thing.

And then the man had started to bleed, to yell--the police had shown up in a blinding blaze of flashing blue-red lights and the woman, the woman who had just saved, who he just _protected,_ was turning away, averting her eyes, refusing to look at him as she betrayed him, making him out to be a criminal--a monster.

He hadn’t known what to feel. There had been too many things _to_ feel, and they threatened to overwhelm him, building up in his head, his heart--pressure increasing with each agonizing second, like an overworked spring stretched for too long, threatening to snap with each burst of anger, disbelief, and _fear_ that surged up within him. 

His brain kept playing the memory on repeat--how he had grabbed the man, how he stumbled, how he landed heavily on the ground, how the blood gushed from the tiny cut on his forehead. With each morbid replay the cut, barely a _nick,_ grew into an ever widening gash, making more thick, viscous, bright red blood spill from the wound, until the man’s face was split open right down the middle, yellowed bone cracked, flesh rotten, skin peeling off in increasingly blackened layers, rendering the man’s face unrecognizable. Gore splattered from the bloody maw, a remnant of what it once was, as his eyes melted onto the pavement with a wet slap, teeth curled into a gruesome snarl, clacking ominously to the syllables of what could well be considered damnation. 

Akira had looked down at his hands, and something surged up from his stomach and stuck thickly in his throat at the blood he saw there. It dripped off his hands slowly, seeming to well up from his very pores, so thick it was almost black.

He hadn’t been able to get his hands to stop shaking. Even when he had fisted them in his pants, staining the fabric, they still held a hairline tremble.

He had wanted to throw up, to cry, anything to purge the build-up of emotions filling him up, barely held together by skin, too thin skin--he was going to burst apart at the fraying seams. But he couldn’t--not in the back of a police cruiser with his hands cuffed too tight, not in front of these unsympathetic cops, whose leering eyes were waiting for any sign of weakness their prey was going to show, so that they could tear him apart. 

So he had swallowed his sickness and his nausea and stubbornly refused to feel anything at all.

It had made time go by slowly. His heart continued to beat far too fast, beating too many times in one second. He tried to keep his breathing even, but his lungs refused to cooperate, spasming in his chest with each labored intake of breath.

And then they were yanking him out of the car, shoving him into a cell by himself, and then tearing the handcuffs off of him as if it was an afterthought. He rubbed at the bruises there absentmindedly, feeling only the skin of his fingertips and not the telltale wetness of blood, even though he could clearly see it dripping onto the concrete floor.

He’d just been put in a holding cell, so there hadn’t been much in the way of amenities besides a rickety, stained bed shoved into a corner. There wasn’t even a blanket, and Akira shivered and rubbed his arms in a vain attempt to stave off the chill of the air conditioning, getting blood everywhere. 

It was the thought of having to sleep while so miserably cold that tipped him over the edge, the last drop his being couldn’t take before it broke and everything flooded out.

He had started trembling, his whole body wracked with tremors that started out as a simple shiver, before it felt like his skeleton was going to crumble into pieces with how badly it shook. He held himself, digging his nails into the flesh of his arms, fingers turning bone white while he marked himself with angry red crescents, but it did nothing to quell the shaking. The threads holding him together were snapping apart with every passing moment of numbing, staticky silence, leaving something broken, sharp, and liable to cut in the debris. Every time he breathed in a wet breath, it dug into him painfully, and he bit his lip against it, sitting down on the bed as gingerly as he could, hoping the cheap, rusted frame didn’t creak and draw attention to himself--hoping they didn’t see how his emotions were spilling out of him through his eyes, searing tears that scorched his cheeks as he blinked rapidly, trying to get them to _stop_ . He had wanted to cry out so bad, to make a sound, so that he could just get it all _out._ But he _couldn’t_ , and even as his tears sped up to try and make up for it, and even as he bit his lip so hard he felt blood well up beneath his teeth, the emotions just kept piling up and up and up, and he couldn’t eject them fast enough.

He had swallowed the blood leaking from his lip--kept swallowing it, because it had been something to do in the crushing silence as he shook and tried to hold himself together with just his feeble, tainted hands.

He had let out one single, solitary, pathetic sob, as soft and quiet as turning the page of a book.

"Keep it down, sheesh," the guard had muttered with a bored tone, banging his baton lightly against the bars, the sound like thunder in the previous silence.

The words hadn’t even been that harsh. The guy just barely tapped his baton against the metal. And yet, Akira had found himself reeling from the words and the blow, something soft and vulnerable inside him curling up around a grievous wound, hiding away behind hastily-erected walls, hoping that when another storm comes in the form of actually scathing words and even harsher punishments, they'd hold up.

And so Akira had forced himself to _stop_ , even as everything built up again, grabbing the weakest of tapes and string to tie his breaking pieces back together. He couldn’t, it wasn’t _safe_ , it will never _be_ safe, not unless he's alone.

He’s--alone. No one is coming for him. No one _cares._

Why...is he alone?

Didn't he do the right thing?

Why are they leaving him?

 _It's because I'm filthy,_ he had told himself, looking at the floor, his shirt, his pants, everything he’d smeared with the color of his crime, and there is no one around to tell him that he's wrong, that it isn’t his fault, that he’s a good person--so the voice in his head had to be telling the truth. 

No one wants him. No one will touch him ever again. And he's never going to subject another person to the burden of himself, a blackened blemish of the world with the blood of someone else on his hands.

With startling clarity, he realizes he's going to be alone forever.

He had spent that entire night shaking and shivering, from both the cold and the effort to hold everything in, to hold himself together, while his less than concerned parents let him suffer in that cell alone for multiple days and nights, all while gritty police processed his paperwork and regarded him like the scum of the earth.

His lawyer had been the only one that seemed to be interested in his well-being, if only to save his own reputation. He, in the interest of the case, had given him his first pair of glasses, a mask to hide behind. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him--and he had found out that if he grew out his bangs a little, he could hide his expression with just a little tilt of his head. 

It was the safest he’d ever felt. It was like teetering over the edge of a crumbling cliff, but it was _safe--_ because there was no one around, no one to see the broken and worthless person underneath the mask. 

Who in their right mind would stand with that kind of person?

 _No one,_ he had thought miserably, sliding his mask onto his face and disappearing from the world.

The train bumps, and Akira is jarred out of his thoughts as it slows to a stop, the intercom overhead calling out, “Shibuya. This is Shibuya.”

He hastily scrambles from his seat, trying to get out before anyone comes in, barely managing to succeed. He sticks his still bloodied hand in his pocket so he wouldn’t have to look at it while the other one gripped his phone tightly, the map app open on the screen.

The blood had never really gone away. It just faded every so often, but it never disappeared completely, nor did it stop even as he rubbed his skin raw every time he took a shower, as the red mixed with the water and swirled sickeningly down the drain. 

At the memory he hunches into the smallest form he can be, slouching his back, turning his shoulders inward, hanging his head and looking at the ground, following the instructions on his phone towards his punishment.

He somehow manages to get to the famous Shibuya Square, and he has to take a moment to process just how many _people_ there are, walking across the expansive street and on the wide sidewalks, casually touching each other like it was no big deal. Strangers bumped into each other, friends slung their arms over each other’s shoulders, punching and slapping each other playfully, businessmen chuckling and patting each other on the back with no preamble.

And then the world freezes, a strange eye-like app taking up his entire screen and he sees--a tall shadow, wreathed in blazing blue flames, and then he sees himself with a righteous and manic smirk on his face, no glasses, hair flying up and showing off the blazing _rebellion_ twisting his features, his eyes a bright yellow that he can make out even from across the entire way.

And then it’s gone, people are moving again, but he can’t unscrew himself from the spot. Everyone flows around him like water, until one person doesn’t--they barely brush elbows with him and it--it feels so warm and strange and new. When was the last time he’d reached out to touch someone? When was the last time someone had touched him?

He remembers. He remembers handing a handmade bouquet, constructed from the weeds in his backyard, to his mother. He remembers being scolded for getting dirty. He remembers her face curling in disgust at the ugly gift, wrenching the flowers from his hands if only to throw them in the trash. But most of all, he remembers how when he wrapped his tiny hand around her’s for reassurance that she still loved him, even if she didn’t like his gift, even if she didn’t like him getting dirty, only for her to yank her hand away liked she’d been burned, leveling the worst glare at him for his impudence.

Neither of his parents had touched him since. The acquaintances he made at school never asked if they could touch him like they did with all the popular or cute kids, and Akira was too afraid to ask them, too scared of getting the same scathing rejection that his parents had leveled at him.

The stranger was lost to the crowd. Akira hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of them, too preoccupied with the vision he’d had and having been thrown into the unfamiliarity of this entire city.

He doesn’t know how to feel about this. Two emotions are warring in his heart, the one that desperately wants to reach out to any fledgling warmth, latch onto any positive emotion like a burr and never let go, while the other is curling up in fear and dread, having someone else invade his personal space like that, having them touch him without his permission...just like those police had done to him.

He shuddered, deleting the strange app so that he could see his maps again, following it until he got on the right train, getting off at the Yongen-Jaya station, walking until he reached a place called Leblanc, where his probation officer Sojiro Sakura was supposed to be.

When he walked in and he saw the look on the guy’s face, he tensed up, biting his lip and worrying it between his teeth, reaching up to play with his grown out fringe but quickly shoving it back into his pocket when his eyes locked onto the red tinge of his skin. 

Sojiro led him up the stairs to his room, which was nothing more than a glorified, abandoned attic--he was a gruff man who set down the rules and made sure that if he stepped out of line he would know the consequences. He didn’t tell him anything he hadn’t heard before; how badly he'd screwed up by getting involved into other people’s business, how he should have just turned his head the other way and kept on walking. The words shouldn’t hurt by now, having been repeated so much, but they still poked at his faltering heart, like a curious kid wondering if a bug could still move after they had torn it’s legs off. 

Akira, despite how awful he had felt on that day, and how hurt the constant reminders made him feel, could not find it in himself to regret it.

He didn’t dare voice his rebellion, too afraid that it would crumble at the slightest contrary breeze, so he held it close to his heart, quietly feeding it every time he felt confident that he had done the right thing, and that the problem was with the system, and not with himself.

His nightmares make him constantly doubt himself--visiting him every night ever since he had spent that cold and miserable night on that flimsy bed, a perfect replica of how he felt on the inside. That, along with everyone, his friends, his parents, even that nice florist down the street that had given him a flower for his birthday...even _she_ had looked at him in fear and disgust, like she was afraid the teenage boy would actually hurt her. 

They all abandoned him, his parents shipping him off to an unknown place with someone they barely knew, seemingly glad to be rid of the trash in their lives, his ‘friends’ cutting him out of their lives with far too much ease and eagerness.

Akira was too busy being forced to pack while trying to deal with all the feelings he felt that he didn’t have a moment to breathe, and now even sleep had abandoned him, surrendering him up to nightmares about blood and hulking figures growing impossibly large, slamming a thick, heavy fist into him, crushing his body into the ground like an empty can of soda, about the woman pulling a knife on him and stabbing him in the back, about the police cuffing him even tighter than before, shoving him into the trunk and cackling while he struggled to breathe, struggled to get out of the tight, dark space, the lack of light slowly sucking the life from him.

Akira felt a hand on his shoulder, and it felt _wrong,_ so wrong, it felt heavy and dark and cold and un--uncomfortable, it made him feel disgusting, he was getting someone else dirty, he didn’t _want it_ , he had to get _away--_

Sojiro blinked at him, shock evident on his face as Akira scrambled backwards like a frightened animal until he hit the wall, where he hunched his shoulders and curved his back and hid his face, trying to make himself as small as possible. He bit his lip so that the fearful whimper wouldn’t get past his rapidly constricting throat.

The man looked flabbergasted, but he had the decency to look a little cowed by Akira’s reaction, rubbing the back of his head and grumbling, telling him that he should probably clean the room if he didn’t want to inhale dust for the rest of the year, before walking down the stairs and leaving him alone to his thoughts.

As soon as he was sure that the man wasn’t going to come back up again, he slid down the wall, wrapping his arms around his legs, hugging them close to his chest as he buried his face in his knees. He was breathing too fast--he needed to get control of himself. 

This was so stupid. He was fucking breaking down over being touched. Why hadn’t he felt this way before when that stranger had brushed against him? 

Maybe it was because of intent. Where Sojiro was trying to communicate sternness and consequences and a little bit of bitterness, the stranger had no intent at all. It was an accident.

He needed to do something, anything to get his mind off of the spiraling emotions. Didn’t Sojiro say something about cleaning?

He found an old dust rag and a bucket filled with sponges and a bottle of cleaning soap, but there was no sink or bathroom upstairs, and he didn’t want to go back downstairs and risk garnering the further ire of his caretaker, so he settled for grabbing the dust rag and getting to work.

It was better like this, exerting his body, distracting himself with the manual labor. And it was somewhat satisfying, wiping all that dust away to reveal the old wood underneath, wood that told of many stories, judging by the scrapes and nicks scattered across it. He had even discovered a dying houseplant that he was determined to bring back from the brink, because it reminded him of the little cactus he used to take care of back at home, that he had unfortunately been unable to bring with him.

He hoped that it would be okay on its own--that even without being nurtured, it would still hold on.

It was too soon when he finished with the dusting and a little bit of organization. The sun was just dipping below the horizon, staining the sky a beautiful orange. Akira couldn’t see much of it from his window--the Tokyo skyline blocked out most of the sky, and it hit him again just how _different_ everything was. 

Instead of the trees touching the sky back in his hometown, he now only saw the flat, impersonal lines of skyscrapers. Instead of shops and homes spaced out, full of room and life, everything was squeezed in as close as possible until it was claustrophobic, crawling up and up and up, hulking over their human ants as they crawled about in their mindless, soulless march from one place to the next.

Akira had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t going to like this place very much.

With nothing to do and not wanting to dwell on memories or going down to deal with his guardian more than he had to, he changed out of his uniform and laid down on his sorry excuse for a bed, as it was just a mattress laid over some crates, with a lumpy pillow and a crusty looking duvet.

He couldn’t really complain. He knows he’s lucky that he gets a bed at all, and he’s grateful for any kind of warmth.

He plugs his phone in to charge, burying his face into the stiff mattress and pulling the stiff but comfortably heavy duvet over himself, letting the smell of coffee beans and the chirp of a few city birds as they flit about lull him into a light stupor.

He didn’t mean to fall completely asleep, not really. Akira didn’t trust Sojiro enough to do that, not quite yet, especially not after he had touched him against his will, and with no door to lock.

But the buildup of mental exhaustion, along with the physical exertion of the past few hours of cleaning was too hard to fight against, and he found himself being pulled into the depths of deep and utter unconsciousness, the kind that when you wake up you aren’t entirely sure what era it is.

Only he woke up screaming.

He’d dreamt about that man again--how his frame bulked up with the cut, face splitting to reveal rows of large serrated teeth, flesh pulsating, bulbous pustules of pus bursting their fluids everywhere, and then the maw swallowed Akira whole, and he was in the monster’s stomach, breathing in acid, his lungs burning from lack of air as he slowly and painfully disintegrated, his screams going unheard until they caught in his throat, building up and getting stuck there, until his neck burst open and his blood was mixing with the flesh closing in around him, and it was dark, so dark, and he couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t move, his hands were cuffed, his ankle chained to a ball, and they were banging the bars, and then everything was turning blue but it wasn’t right, he still couldn’t breathe, two pairs of yellow eyes were looking at him with concern, no one's looked at him like that in his entire life, and then someone was yelling at him to _“Shut up--”_

His eyes flew open and he backed himself into a corner, pulling the stiff duvet up to his face and curling up, eyes frantically searching the attic for a figure to attach to the voice he had heard.

Only there was no one there.

He started hyperventilating--the dream had been too real, and even as he levered in breath after breath, even as he felt his chest heaving, nothing was going into his lungs, he still couldn’t _fucking breathe._

 _“God, just--”_ the voice said again, but still there was no one around.

Is he going crazy? Did he finally crack under all the pressure? 

_“You’re not crazy, I can fucking hear you too,”_ the voice said, sounding groggy and irritated. Through the panicked haze of his mind, he figures that he--at least it sounded like a he--had just been unceremoniously woken up.

 _“Just--open a goddamn window and breathe, okay? Fucking breathe with me,”_ he said, and then he was demonstrating with his own breath, sucking in air through his nose for a long couple of seconds, before letting out slowly through his mouth, and Akira scrambled to follow, cracking open the window to let in the fresh, crisp night air, trying to match up his breaths with the ones he was hearing.

Eventually, after repeating the action a couple of times, he managed to finally feel as if he was getting the oxygen he needed without having to heave it in, and his lungs slowed down. After a couple more moments of taking in cool air, he was able to uncoil himself from his defensive position, laying back down onto the mattress with a tired, but relieved sigh.

Now that his brain wasn’t blinded by irrational fear, he was able to think properly. So no one was in the room with him, but he could hear a voice, as loud and clear as if it was speaking directly into his ear?

There was only one explanation for that--a soulmate connection.

But--when? How? Akira hadn’t touched anyone purposefully since he got here, and Sojiro’s touch was unwelcome. A soulmate connection couldn’t be established like that. Was it…

No way. Akira had bumped into his soulmate _accidentally,_ in _Tokyo?_

 _“Are you quite done?”_ the boy in his head remarked irritably. _“Do you need me to baby you anymore?”_

He was startled by the words, by the callousness of which they were said, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. But...he had guided Akira down from his panic attack, had helped him breath when he really had no obligation to. He found that even the brashness of this person’s care wasn’t all that bad. 

_“N-no, I’m okay now,”_ Akira responded mentally. _“Thank you.”_

The boy huffed, but he was unable to keep the tinge of satisfaction out of his voice. _“Whatever.”_

Silence followed. It was the worst, and Akira found himself babbling to just fill it.

_“So, um, you’re my soulmate, huh? That’s crazy! I, uh, didn’t think I would ever meet my soulmate, haha, the world is a strange place, right? I mean, it’s just--”_

_“Do you ever shut up?”_ the voice interrupted, but he didn’t sound especially inconvenienced. He sounded resigned and maybe...just a touch curious, just a tad intrigued? _“It’s too goddamn early in the morning for this shit.”_

_“Uh, sorry, I woke you up didn’t I? I’ll just um, leave you alone now, I’ll manage on my own--”_

_“Sure you will,”_ the other responded sarcastically. _“I can feel your fear, you know. You don’t want to go back to sleep.”_

Akira didn’t know what to say to that, especially since he was right. So he didn’t say anything at all. The other boy sighed again. 

_“That’s fine, I guess. I don’t really want to go back to sleep either.”_

The raven fidgeted underneath his covers, biting his lip and messing with his hair, once again hiding it away underneath the covers when he saw red. He got this blood on the other person, and now he was stuck with an unsightly stain. 

_“I’m sorry,”_ Akira mumbled.

 _“What the fuck are you sorry for?”_ the boy said, sounding very exasperated.

 _“I--my hands--they’re contaminated. I’m polluted. I got you dirty too,”_ he blurted out, surprised with the ease in which his fears spilled from his mental/metaphorical lips. Was it because this person was his soulmate? Was it because they were strangers? Was it just easier to think rather than speak aloud? Whatever the reason, the words were out there now, and he was fearfully prepared for the other boy to cut off their connection and never speak to him again. He was prepared, but he had a niggling voice in his head whispering that he most likely wouldn’t be able to take even his soulmate abandoning him on top of everything else.

The other boy took a while to respond, and when he did, it was with a soft, vulnerable voice. _“It’s no big deal. I’m filthy too. You can’t possibly make me anymore of a mess than I already am.”_

Akira blurted out a relieved laugh. He wasn’t being abandoned. And maybe it’s fucked up that he’s glad this person is just as much of a mess as he is just so that he can stay with him, but he thinks he’s earned a little selfishness with all that he's been through lately. _“I...sorry. I’m kinda glad that you’re dirty too.”_

 _“Quit apologizing, it’s annoying,”_ the other boy said, but he was doing a poor job of acting like he was genuinely irritated. _“And it’s fine that you feel that way, because I felt the exact same when you said that you were foul too.”_

Some silence passed, but for the first time in a week, it didn’t feel like it was going to crush Akira.

 _“So,”_ the voice interrupted the quiet, sounding contemplative, and just a little bit defensive. _“Are you going to try and find me?”_

 _“I--”_ Akira said, biting his lip again. He couldn’t deny that he was curious as to what his soulmate looked like, and he was intensely intrigued by him, wanting to find out just why he was so tainted, what made the world see him as scum. But at the same time, he wanted--needed--the anonymity. Someone besides this stranger knowing just how much of a blemish he was in the world made him start shaking all over again. _“N-no. Not unless you want me to.”_

The stranger on the other side of the connection seemed to take a moment to process this information, like he couldn’t really believe someone was respecting his boundaries. _“...are you positive? Staying anonymous doesn’t bother you in the slightest?”_

 _“I mean,”_ Akira began, not really having the energy or the motivation to lie. _“I’ll admit I’m curious as to what you look like. But at the same time I don’t really want anybody to...to…”_

He couldn’t finish, but it seemed like his soulmate could pick up on the slack. _“...to know just how much of a foul smear you are on this equally foul earth?”_

 _“Yeah,”_ Akira breathed, awed that someone could understand him so well even after having just met not half an hour ago. _“Yeah.”_

The other boy hummed. _“I think...I get that.”_

Another beat of silence passes, and again it is not unpleasant.

 _“Well,”_ his soulmate says decisively, with a tone of finality. _“This has been fun and all, but I have things to do in the morning, and I’d like to get some sleep after you so rudely woke me up.”_

The raven knows that this boy is about to leave him to the oppressive quiet again, and it’s not like he can really blame him. But, at the same time, he has never felt so at ease admitting his flaws, has never had this kind of freedom to be himself before, and he finds himself extremely reluctant to let it go, so he does the one thing he’s never dared to do--reach out with both hands and grasp what he wants, vowing to never let go.

 _“Um!”_ Akira starts, and the other boy sighs but indicates with a huff to continue. _“Is it okay if I can talk to you sometimes? We don’t have to be obligated to one another or anything, we don’t have to reveal our identities or talk about anything we don’t want to. I just--y-you’re the first person who’s seemed to care about me in my entire life. A-and I’m sorry I’m kinda just dumping this on you, I just don’t want you to let you go. So, um...please? Just every now and then?”_

His soulmate doesn’t respond for the longest time, and Akira thinks that he’s scared him off, that he’s severed the connection and will never talk to him again, and that’s when he gets interrupted by that soft, vulnerable voice again.

_“We...can keep talking. But no revealing our identities, and when I say I don’t want to talk about something, I mean it. Understood?”_

Akira nods frantically, excitedly, before remembering that the other boy can’t see that. _“Yeah! I get it. Um. Thank you…”_

 _“You don’t have to thank me over something this trivial,”_ he says with a tinge of exasperation, but he sounds oddly pleased. _“Don’t want to let me go, huh…?”_

Strangely, sheepishly, Akira finds himself blushing at the admission. _“Um, forget I said that.”_

 _“No, I don’t think I will,”_ his soulmate responds, and he sounds...it’s hard to place, but he sounds like the words mean more to him than Akira could possibly begin to guess. _“I’ll never let you live it down.”_

It’s a promise. A promise to meet up again, to talk about themselves as much as they want to, without fear of being discovered or judged.

 _“You’re mean,”_ Akira responds instead of spelling out how that promise makes him feel.

 _“Get used to it,”_ his soulmate quips.

Another beat of companionable silence passes.

_“I suppose that I should go now. I wasn’t lying when I said I have things to do in the morning.”_

For some reason, Akira knows as soon as the other boy is gone, the silence will become crushing again, and that there’s no way he’ll be able to sleep again. And he doesn’t think he’ll be able to deal with all the disapproving adults in his life tomorrow when Sojiro takes him to his school if he doesn’t get a good night’s rest.

And, well. He’s a little selfish. He likes spending time with this other person, wants to keep them around for as long as possible.

 _“Um,”_ he interrupts, and he tries not to wilt when the other boy sighs irritably.

_“What is it now?”_

_“I, uh,”_ Akira begins, trying to articulate what he wants without sounding overly clingy, _“don’t think I can go back to sleep without you here.”_

_“And why fucking not?”_

_“I-I--nothing around me is familiar. I don’t think...uh, the p-panic attack, it, I, I, the--silence--”_

_“Calm down,”_ his soulmate says, and while his tone doesn’t change much, the presence in his head changes into something softer, more concerned. It presses into him like a warm blanket, and immediately Akira finds himself following the order, relaxing into the mattress. _“...does this happen often?”_

 _“Only recently,”_ Akira responds a little sleepily, the connection in his head a balm against his frayed nerves.

 _“I see,”_ the other boy hums, seeming to think about something before he says anything else. _“So it’s the silence that makes it hard?”_

_“Yeah.”_

The boy seems to be debating very intensely with himself, conflict obvious in how he makes little noises of frustration, before he heaves another sigh. _“Don’t fucking say anything. Just listen, and try to fucking sleep.”_

 _“O...kay?”_ Akira responds, more than a little confused. What does his soulmate have planned?

He hears him take a deep breath before he seems to steel himself, and then he starts humming.

It’s a tune he doesn’t recognize, but it’s nice. It goes up and down, and it’s a little sad, but it fills the silence so nicely, and while Akira can’t quite discern the voice beyond it sounding male, he thinks that it sounds beautiful, and that he likes it very much.

Slowly his eyes start to drift shut, the voice of his soulmate going up and down in a wonderful lullaby, soothing aches, stitching wounds shut, massaging out stiffness, caressing his entire being, and for once, he feels secure enough to let go of his consciousness willingly.

Maybe it's the fact that he went under like this, or that his soulmate is still connected to him even as he hums himself to sleep, but he dreams that he’s holding hands with someone who cares about him.

When morning creeps in through the still open window, and he can hear the presence in his head breathing quietly, he thinks that he can handle whatever the unfamiliar, unfriendly city may throw his way.

**Author's Note:**

> ABitObsessed: Thank you all so much for reading! we somehow managed to make it this far...also, we had no plans on making this a multichapter, but my coauthor started ranting and throwing around headcannons and bam, here we are. Thank you again!
> 
> Here's my twitter, please be aware that it's an 18+ account!  
> https://twitter.com/ObssessedA
> 
> Blixer: thank you all so much for reading! check out our other works, we'd really appreciate it!


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